*** JAN-WERNER MÜLLER: Qu’est-ce que le populisme ? Définir enfin la menace. Premier Parallèle (5 rue Tolain, F-75020 Paris. Tel: (33-9) 82587280 – Email: contact@premierparallele.fr – Internet: http://www.premierparallele.fr ). 2016, 190 pp. €18. ISBN 979-10-94841-35-8.
During his last two presidential bids did Nicolas Sarkozy attempt to present himself as a more acceptable watered-down form of “Le Pen”? Does the populist, Donald Trump, really deserve to be described as a “fascist”? What is the real nature of the heralds of the “Illiberal state” who are stirring things up in Central and Eastern Europe? Where are the “People” in all this in the countries calling for democracy? These are some of the questions to which the German political scientist Jan-Werner Müller brings some much needed robust and clear answers. This political scientist teaches political theory and the history of ideas at Princeton University in the US and in this publication seeks to define what populism really is and on this basis who really can be described as a populist. He therefore manages to explain clearly and in a convincing way what exactly the “problem” of populism is and which is particularly making waves in Europe. He covers a number of very different phenomena and sometimes a range of extremely tendentious interpretations. He subsequently asks whether certain theoreticians on the left are wrong to criticise the fact that “the established parties exploit as they see fit the supreme accusation of populism to reduce any criticism about the dominant neoliberal set up”. Obviously they are not wrong to do this but it is also deemed necessary to refrain from reducing the unconstructed purists from the victorious “No” campaigns during the “European” referendum and Union countries into populists…
The question of populism is therefore an extremely sensitive one. Jan-Werner Müller tackles it on the basis of a deeply held conviction: even if those who claim to be populists and see it as a means of helping democracy triumph in radical way in the name of the people, “populism is not in itself democratic and undoubtedly tends to be antidemocratic”. In an effort to validate this point of view, he outlines a critical theory of populism, which he backs up with a theory relating to democracy. On the basis of fundamental and historic positions, the author develops a precise concept of populism that enables him to distinguish between the various political phenomena that actually exist. His first two chapters are therefore devised as a way of facilitating our understanding of the motivations of the populists themselves and what they consider as the appropriate policy to put forward. These explanations also seek to convince the reader that, “in contrast to what is largely received opinion, the populists can indeed govern and impose the policy see fit”. Nonetheless, nothing good can be expected of this is because “populism always tends to be hostile to democracy” and this phenomenon “is not just an ideology whose representatives, as we frequently hear, are just pushing ideas a little further… and involved in the direct application of the people’s will”. The author argues that in reality, populism “is the shadow created by a representative democracy” but which actually violates it by declaring it as the “only representative the people”. In relation to what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas was correct to observe, the people “manifest themselves exclusively in the plural sense of the verb” and the populists are necessarily anti-pluralist…and instrumentalise a symbolic representation of the co-called real people in order to discredit the democratic institutions, which, unfortunately for them, escape their control”.
In the book’s follow-up, the author outlines a number of possibilities that could help the democratic forces defeat the populists and he calls on them to not give into the temptation of “psychologise populism” but rather, assert that they are also part of the people. At a European level, he is concerned about the possible confrontation in the future between the populists of the right and left who, “armed with their respective concepts of the people” could undermine the political legitimacy of the European project. In this perspective, he welcomes the “small step” taken in the right direction in the innovative creation of Spitzenkandidaten. This progress, however, descended into high “farce” with the formation of the “great pro-European coalition destined to provide a counterweight to any assumed populists”. He also regrets that the Commission does not have the skills or instruments to “develop a genuine European economic and financial policy” and also urges them to stop committing the error they have been guilty of for so long of “creating an amalgam between populist groups and parties that simply want to create European integration in a different way”. His conclusion on this point is implacable and obviously very farsighted: “in the current institutional configuration, the European Union is slowly sabotaging itself and does not really need anyone else to commit this act of sabotage on its behalf”. It would be difficult to say any more clearly that the “princes” currently in charge of Europe are making the bed of the populists themselves! Michel Theys
*** VANGELIS TZOUKAS: Le fantôme du nazisme. La mythologie et la fascination du Troisième Reich de la période d'avant-guerre à nos jours. Editions Hestia (84 rue Evripidou, GR-10553 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3213907 – fax: 3214610 – Email: info@hestia.gr – Internet: http://www.hestia.gr ). « Histoire et politique » series. 2016, 168 pp. €14. ISBN 978-960-05-1683-8.
The Nazis are still polluting the world today in many different ways. In this book, the sociologist, Vangelis Tzoukas, examines some of the particularities associated with esotericism, racial mysticism, the pagan nature of the SS, the adoption of conspiracy theories and its attempt to appear as a kind of religion. This lecturer at the department of philosophy and social and political sciences at the University of Crete, develops a new Nazi mythology that step-by-step since the end of the Second World War has largely become widespread over the past few decades, particularly due to the development of the Internet and pop culture in its different forms (cinema, music, cartoons, videogames, etc.). Drawing on a very comprehensive international literature on the matter, the author subsequently presents for the very first time in Greek, a scientific publication that goes beyond the traditional pseudo-historic approaches in this domain. The publication also contains a comprehensive bibliography. (AKa)
*** JOHAN CUPPENS: Les Belges au Parlement européen depuis 1979. Union européenne (Bureau d’information du Parlement européen en Belgique, 60 rue Wiertz, B-1047 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2842005 – Email: epbrussels@ep.europa.eu – Internet: http://www.europarl.be ). 2015, 112 pp. ISBN 978-92-823-7525-9
Superbly illustrated and excellently laid out, this bumper size book is the only one of its kind in the European Union and provides an overview of all the different Belgian players who have been or who are still representatives at the European Parliament since the first direct election by universal suffrage in 1979. It was put together by the journalist Johan Cuppens and creates a comprehensive synthesis of the results obtained in Belgium during the eight European elections so far organised. Each election is presented in the context of the national and/or international political situation at the time. Part of the book focuses on facts and figures, such as the example of the longer or shorter “careers” of the major and minor players among the members of parliament. The core of the book consist of interviews with the figures that headed the list during the 1979 election such as Antoinette Spaak and Léo Tindemans, as well as Karel Van Miert and Willy De Clercq who subsequently became members of the Commission. The three other figures are the current Commissioner Marianne Thyssen, the former Prime Minister Wilfried Martens and Véronique De Keyser –who also provide their respective testimonies regarding the action taken by the European Parliament. This book is only available at the European Parliament Information Office in Belgium. Dutch and German versions are also available. (MT)
*** ULRIKE M. VIETEN, GILL VALENTINE (Editors): Cartographies of Differences. Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Peter Lang (32 Hochfeldstrasse, CH-3012 Berne. Tel: (41-32): 3761717 – fax: 3761727 – Email: info@peterlang.com – Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). “New Visions of the Cosmopolitan” series, No. 5. 2016, 231 pp. €69, £55, $89.95. ISBN 978-3-0343-1859-4.
Contemporary cosmopolitanism is now entering the mindsets of certain scientists who were in fact previously less open to this concept. This book provides ground breaking testimony and it authors demonstrate how this concept, in their opinion, goes hand-in-hand with greater plurality and complexity. When differences encounter one another, particular attention to the way in which places and localities can influence the way in which these differences have been experienced in places of conflict that they can afterwards become contact zones with the “Other”. This situation acts as a lightning conductor in the nine chapters making up the three parts of the book. The first focuses on how certain legal standards can clash in certain places. This sometimes involves situations involving homophobia in Warsaw or Leeds, for example, (Europeanization in this context is perceived as a sphere of influence), the protection of sexual minorities in Christian Northern Ireland and attitudes towards people who are not generally perceived as being part of the dominant aesthetic culture or deviate from perceived attitudes towards the human body. The authors contributing to the second part of the book examine the more traditional aspects of cosmopolitanism such as “citizenship and un-belonging”. In light of the Scottish example, they also look at the emotional dynamics of feelings linked to nationhood and a specific territory of nationality which the authors argue “should not be underestimated”. Ulrike Vieten (Queen’s University Belfast) puts forward an argument relating to the presence of Turkish and Kurdish citizens in Berlin during an era of post-migration and post-cosmopolitanism, a vernacular cosmopolitan culture of contemporary metropolises, such as Berlin which still faces they the issue of overcoming “a narrow perception of indigenous national belonging and conventional perceptions all the migrant as the ‘Other’, when in fact the latter has become a European compatriot citizen”. The final chapter of this section focuses on civil society and develops much-needed bridges between citizenship and the cities of Mostar and Novi Sad. The final part of the publication focuses on the question of languages and cultural communication, with incursions into Spain, the north of Italy and Austria, as well as Leeds and Warsaw again. (PBo)
*** ANASTASIOS-IOANNIS METAXAS (Editors): La science politique, enquête interdisciplinaire et transversale sur le fonctionnement de la politique. La théorie politique : les choix et les attentes de valeur (Vol 8). Editions Sideris (116 rue Solonos, GR-10681 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3833434 – fax: 3832294 – Email: contact@isideris.gr). 2016, 608 p., €25. ISBN 978-960-08-0721-9.
This eighth volume of a 10-part study edited by Anastasios Metaxas, Emeritus Professor at the Universities of Athens and the Peloponnese, consists of contributions made by 18 academic specialists who examine the foundations of political theory. Scientific attempts to provide a structured global systematic approach motivated on the basis of an exegetic approach is also examined. This subsequently leads the authors to dissect a number of phenomena relating to power in general. (AKa)